ABBYY®, a leading provider of technologies and solutions to action information today announced theavailability of ABBYY Smart Classifier on the European market. The new product enables businesses to leverage and act on complex,unstructured information by delivering highly accurate document classification. Based on Compreno®, ABBYY’s innovative natural languageprocessing (NLP) technology, Smart Classifier quickly organises large repositories of documents according to both statistic and semanticanalysis of content. Once classified, information is ready for search and retrieval, automated routing, intelligent data extraction and decision-making.

Allocating relevant information to the responsible entity at the right time is key in today’s fast-paced world. However, the vast majority ofincoming data is unstructured, which hinders businesses from automated, machine-based access and processing – and from using it to theiradvantage.

“ABBYY Smart Classifier empowers companies to derive value from the data stream that constantly pours into their business,” says JuppStoepetie, CEO of ABBYY Europe. “Documents are automatically assigned to predefined categories on the basis of their content. Thislanguage-based insight into information creates new opportunities to optimise critical business processes – including informationgovernance, data migration, content management and client support.”

ABBYY Smart Classifier is a scalable server-based document classification module for categorising unstructured information based onstatistics

With the goal to increase the value and usability of loyalty points, Verifone (NYSE: PAY), a global leader in payments and commerce solutions, and FIS(NYSE: FIS), a global leader in financial services and payments technology, announced a collaboration to enable consumers to pay with loyalty points linked to their credit or debit cards at the point-of-sale (POS).

Verifone developed a new application called Verifone Points Redemption which connects to the FIS Premium Payback Network to provide a quick, secure, and easy way for third party loyalty programs to participate. Merchants will be able to download the free app to their device from the open, cloud-based Verifone Commerce Platform and eligible cardholders only need to swipe, dip or tap their card at a participating retailer, to pay for their purchases with points.

“We are helping merchants and consumers realize the value of loyalty programs by bringing points redemption to the shopping experience right where it counts—at the checkout,” said Glen Robson, executive vice president, Head of Verifone Solutions. “With FIS’ loyalty solution accessible through the cloud on our devices, merchants have a simple way to enhance the checkout experience by offering their customers immediate savings on in-store purchases using points.”

Research shows that every year up to $16 billion in loyalty points are left unused or forgotten. FIS’ Premium Payback has shown the ability to combat that, however. In fact, nearly one of five Premium Payback users have said they selected merchants based on the ability to use their reward points.

“Today’s consumers have been digitally empowered and expect tomorrow’s payment and rewards capabilities today,” said Bruce Lowthers, executive vice president, FIS Global Retail Payments. “The single integration point to brick-and-mortar retailers uniquely helps loyalty programs increase member touch points, while our relationship with Verifone expands the reach to bring scalable loyalty points redemption to many more consumers.”

When a shopper presents a loyalty-linked card payment on a Verifone device, it will prompt them automatically when enough points are available to pay for their items, eliminating the hassle of vouchers or ordering gift cards. The yes or no prompt is quick and easy and specifically designed not to slowdown the checkout process. The connection between Verifone and FIS is being powered by Modo’s COIN^® operated Digital Payments Hub.

The FIS Premium Payback Network currently supports loyalty points redemption at thousands of gas stations nationwide for 8.5 million consumers from 3,100 banks.

Visit the Verifone Booth #3543 and FIS Booth #624 at the NRF Retail’s Big Show January 14-17 in New York City.

 Equinix Inc., the global interconnection and data center company, today announced global financial cloud infrastructure provider, Beeks Financial Cloud, has deployed on Equinix's Cloud Exchange as it continues to expand its business globally.

Beeks Financial Cloud leverages Cloud Exchange and Platform Equinix™ to connect its customers to global cloud services and networks via a secure, private and low-latency interconnection model. By joining the Equinix Cloud Exchange, Beeks Financial Cloud gains access to instantly connect to multiple cloud service providers (CSPs) in 21 markets, build a more secure application environment and reduce the total cost of private network connectivity to CSPs for its customers.

Highlights / Key Facts

• Today, banks, brokers, forex companies and professional traders are increasingly relying on high-speed, secure and low-latency connections for more efficient business transactions, as demand for data centers and colocation services in the cloud, enterprise and financial services sector continues to grow. According to a July 2016 report by Gartner – Colocation-Based Interconnection Will Serve as the 'Glue' for Advanced Digital Business Applications – digital business is "enabled and enhanced through high-speed, secure, low-latency communication among enterprise assets, cloud resources, and an ecosystem of service providers and peers. Architects and IT leaders must consider carrier-neutral data center interconnection as a digital business enabler."
• Beeks Financial Cloud, a UK-based company, first deployed in an Equinix London data center four years ago on one server rack, now has approximately 80 interconnections within Equinix across eight data centers situated in financial business hubs around the world. These direct connections provide increased performance and security between Beeks and its customers and partners across its digital supply chain. Beeks was the first provider in the world to use cross connects to ensure a retail trader customer had a direct connection to their broker.
• Beeks' new deployment in Equinix's Cloud Exchange provides the necessary digital infrastructure and access to a mature financial services business ecosystem to connect with major financial services providers in key markets around the globe via the cloud. Equinix's global data centers are home to 1,000+ financial services companies and the world's largest multi-asset class electronic trading ecosystem— interconnected execution venues and trading platforms, market data vendors, service providers, and buy-side and sell-side firms.
• Equinix's Cloud Exchange offers software-defined direct connections to multiple CSPs including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute and Office 365, IBM Softlayer, Oracle Cloud and others. This has allowed Beeks to scale up rapidly while securely connecting to multiple cloud providers.
• Beeks Financial Cloud has continued to expand its business on Equinix's global interconnection platform of 146 International Business Exchanges™ (IBX®) in 40 markets across the globe. Beeks is currently deployed in Equinix's International Business Exchanges™ (IBX®) in London, New York, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Chicago, and most recently, Hong Kong.
• The move to Equinix's Cloud Exchange is expected to help save approximately £1M over the next 3 years, while enabling Beeks Financial Cloud to meet the needs of its global customer base who thrive and grow through forex trading.
• London is a key player in the global digital economy, with the fifth largest GDP by metropolitan area in the world. Equinix's flagship London data center based in Slough (LD6) is one of the fastest-growing in the UK and has been established as a hub for businesses to interconnect in a secure colocation environment.

Quotes

• Gordon McArthur, CEO, Beeks Financial Cloud:
  "Beeks Financial Cloud has continued to grow rapidly on Equinix's interconnection platform, with Hong Kong being our eighth addition. Data centers underpin our business and we are confident that Equinix's Cloud Exchange will enable the speed, resilience and reduced latency our customers have come to expect from our company. Equinix's global footprint of interconnected data centers has allowed our business to really thrive."
• James Eibisch, research director, EMEA Telecoms and Networking, IDC:
  "We see the global demand for data center colocation being largely driven by cloud adoption. That coupled with the expanded reach of Equinix's global interconnection platform is a compelling offering for businesses such as Beeks that require connectivity and access to new markets to meet business demand."
• Russell Poole, managing director UK, Equinix:
  "We're seeing an increasing number of customers leverage our interconnection platform to expand their businesses globally. The rapid growth of the cloud industry is driving activity in all business sectors including financial services – we are seeing more businesses partner with us to host their critical financial infrastructures off-premise in our data centers in order to get the best out of the cloud. On Equinix Cloud Exchange, we are confident Beeks Financial Cloud will continue to accelerate its growth and move quickly into new markets."

WEX Inc., a leading global provider of corporate payment solutions, today announced that it has signed a new agreement with Enterprise Fleet Management in Canada. The partnership supports Enterprise's growth in the Canadian market through WEX's Canadian fleet capabilities.

WEX and Enterprise Fleet Management have been working together since 1993 in the United States. Leveraging the Canadian fueling locations now available through WEX's acquisition of EFS, the expanded partnership will deliver WEX products to Enterprise Fleet Management customers throughout Canada as well.

"WEX is a global company servicing markets throughout the world. We are looking forward to this new chapter in our partnership with Enterprise and the opportunity for us to expand our presence in Canada," said Melissa Smith, president and CEO of WEX, Inc. "WEX and Enterprise have a long, successful history together, and we're certain that working in tandem to bring our offering to Canada will prove beneficial to everyone involved."

"We're thrilled to extend our 24-year partnership with WEX into the Canadian market," said Brice Adamson, Senior Vice President of Enterprise Fleet Management. "We have a great history of working collaboratively with WEX, and we are confident we will see continued success through this expanded agreement."

Radware®, a leading provider of cyber security and application delivery solutions ensuring the digital user experience for applications in virtual, cloud, and software-defined data centres, has found that hackers and companies agree on one thing: Data is lucrative.

Radware’s Global Application and Network Security Report 2016-2017 revealed that 49% of European businesses confirmed cyber-ransom was the #1 attack motivation in 2016, an increase of nearly 100% from the 25% recorded in 2015. What’s more, 25% of European IT professionals surveyed said they were worried about a full or partial outage from cyber-attacks, 23% said data leakage or loss was their key cyber security concern, 18% said reputation loss, 7% were concerned with service degradation and 6% feared customer or partner loss.

Despite this rise, the study revealed that less than half of European businesses interviewed claimed to be well prepared to fight ransom attacks with 44% having no cyber security emergency response plan in place. Additionally, 77% said they didn’t have cyber-insurance for their business and only 5% keep bitcoins on hand for ransoms.

The full report identifies 2016’s major attack trends, outlines industry preparedness, and gives insider views. The biggest findings included:

• 49% of European respondents reported that ransom was the top motivation behind cyber-attacks they had experienced in 2016, followed by competition (30%), political hacktivism (27%), and insider threats (20%).
• Half of all organisations surveyed globally had experienced a malware or botnet attack in the past year, and 55% said that IoT complicates their detection or mitigation requirements as it increases the surface of the attack landscape making it harder to defend.
• Global respondents felt least prepared to defend against Advanced Persistent Threats (43%)
• Massive DDoS attacks made headlines in 2016. These big attacks can do a lot of damage: Globally, 35% reported impact to their servers, 25% claimed damage to their internet pipe, and 23% said large-scale attacks caused the failure of their firewall.
• More than 76% of European DDoS attacks reported by organizations were under 1 Gbps.

“The message from our report couldn’t be clearer: Money is the top motivator in the threat landscape today,” said Pascal Geenens, Radware’s EMEA Security Evangelist. “Attackers have expanded their skillset and are leveraging new tools in their attempts to access lucrative data. Whether it is a ransom attack to lock a company’s data, a DDoS smokescreen to facilitate information theft or a brute force attack to attempt to gain direct access to internal data, attackers have shown that unprepared businesses will be easy targets.

“We expect these attacks to continue to gain momentum as the Darknet becomes mainstream and offers relatively easy and affordable access to powerful tools and hacking services that can wreak havoc on businesses. The scope of attacks available will also grow due to the huge increase in unsecure IoT connected devices that reside in our homes, offices, and even on our person. Our report shows that most organisations are still not prepared to fend off many of the more sophisticated attacks or deal with ransom attacks.”

Key trends for 2017 from the report include:

• With the code for the Mirai IoT Botnet now available to the public, novice and sophisticated hackers are already adjusting and “improving” the code’s capabilities, tailoring it to meet their own cyber objectives. In 2017, exponentially more devices are expected to become targeted and enslaved into IoT botnets. IoT device manufacturers will have to face the issue of securing their devices before they are brought to market, as botnet attacks from these devices can generate large-scale attacks that easily exceed 1 Tbps. 
• Cyber ransom is the fastest-growing motive and technique in cyber-attacks, as most phishing attempts now deliver ransomware. Today, threat actors focus their ransom attacks to target phones, laptops, company computers, and other devices that are a daily necessity. In the future, they may target lifesaving healthcare devices like defibrillators.
• Rise of Permanent Denial of Service (PDoS) for Data Centre and IoT Operations: Also known loosely as “phlashing”, PDoS is an attack that damages a system so badly that it requires replacement or reinstallation of the hardware itself. While these attacks have been around for a long time, they only appear sporadically. However, they can do a tremendous amount of damage. Radware anticipates that more threat actors will target the destruction of devices via PDoS attacks in the coming year.
• Telephony DoS (TDoS) is expected to rise in sophistication and importance, catching many by surprise. Cutting off communications during crisis periods, such as terror attacks, could impede first responders’ situational awareness, exacerbate suffering and pain, and potentially increase loss of life.
• Public transportation held hostage. From trains and planes to buses and automobiles, entire systems of transportation are becoming self-guided. This automation is meant to provide increased safety, improved reliability, and higher efficiencies. Most of this critical infrastructure may be vulnerable to threat actors looking to hijack public transportation or lock the system down with ransomware. 

“The intent of today’s threat actor is to develop the best tools possible to either disable an organisation or steal its data,” said Geenens. “While businesses focus on delivering the highest value to their customers, they will also have to stay vigilant and ensure they are able to meet the security challenges they will likely face. Security must be woven into the customer experience for a company to truly succeed. Without this change in thinking, organisations will remain vulnerable.”

Radware’s Emergency Response Team (ERT), which actively monitors and mitigates attacks in real-time, creates this annual report for use by the security community. The ERT team compiles this report using a combination of data from a vendor-neutral survey of organisations, Radware’s in-the-trenches experience fighting cyber-attacks, as well as the perspective of third-party service providers. The goal of this report is to provide the industry with insights and best practices to help prepare for 2017’s security landscape.

Freelancers and micro-business owners who have yet to register their business with HMRC are rapidly running out of time if they want to get their Self Assessment tax return submitted to HMRC, FreeAgent has warned.

 The company - who provide award-winning cloud accounting software for freelancers, micro-businesses and their accountants - has warned business owners that failing to register for Self Assessment in the next week will mean they are unlikely to be able to submit their tax return on time, and will be fined by HMRC.

 Emily Coltman FCA, chief accountant at FreeAgent, said: “Before you can submit your Self Assessment tax return you must first register with HMRC and get your unique activation code sent to you by post. You simply cannot file your return without this.

 “It’s a relatively straightforward process but, as you’re relying on snail mail to get your code, it can take a while to receive the information you need. And if you leave it too late, you won’t get your code in time to be able to meet the January 31st deadline.

 “Remember that HMRC doesn’t accept failing to register in time as an acceptable excuse for filing a tax return late, so if you don’t get your code and you can’t submit your Self Assessment return, you’ll receive an automatic £100 fine. In addition, if you don’t pay your tax you’ll also face extra financial penalties which can quickly escalate.

 “It’s better to act quickly and register with HMRC now than risk leaving it until it’s too late.”

 During the last Self Assessment season, 870,000 people failed to submit their tax return before the January 31st 2016 deadline; leading to automatic £100 fines from HMRC.  

 In addition to failing to register with HMRC on time, Emily has also highlighted three other common mistakes that freelancers and micro-business owners make on their Self Assessment tax returns.

 1- Failing to declare all income

 When you’re filling out your tax return, you must remember to include all of the income you’ve earned during the year - not just what you’ve received via your main employment. This includes:

• Any income that you had invoiced, or for which you’d done the work, before 5th April 2016, but which your customers did not pay you for until after that date (unless you’re using the cash basis to prepare your accounts)

• Any other source of income - for example from another job, interest on a savings account or rent earned from property. You must have all of the relevant paperwork for this income (such as your forms P60 and P11D from your employer and your bank interest certificates) and remember that these will all have to relate to the tax year 2015/16.

• Tax-free income - such as interest earned on an ISA - should not be included on your tax return.

 2- Leaving out other important information

 You also have to include important information about expenditure that you have made for your business on your tax return. Failure to include these could result in you paying an incorrect amount of tax. These include:

• All of your business costs - i.e anything you paid for yourself rather than from the business’s bank account. This includes any business costs that you incurred before the business started to trade, as long as you spent the money no more than 7 years before the start of your business and the cost could have been included if you had incurred it after the start of your business - e.g, costs like getting business cards printed before you made your first sale.

• Unless you’re using the cash basis to prepare your accounts, you need to include any large pieces of equipment (or capital assets) that you bought for your business.  These don’t go in as day-to-day running costs but you may be able to claim capital allowances on them.

 3 - Including unclaimable expenses

 If you don’t get all of your expenses correct, you won’t pay the right amount of tax. So make sure you follow the correct rules around business clothing, entertaining, food & drink, business use of home and travel expenses - because there are many common mistakes that small businesses make with regard to these.

 Either check HMRC’s website or look for an alternative source of small business accounting information to find out which expenses you can and can’t claim tax relief on before you tackle your tax return.  

With "#openspace" in Berlin-Schöneberg, Commerzbank has developed the first digitalisation platform for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). As the first of its kind, "#openspace" is a corporate transformation platform for German SMEs and constitutes a long-term cooperation between SMEs, innovation partners, and start-ups with the objective of successfully tackling the challenges posed by the digital future together. At the same time, "#openspace" is available as a home base for national and international start-ups providing advisory and logistical support.

"Digitalisation dominates the media, sciences, and corporate world like no other topic. But how can companies master the challenges posed by digitalisation? As an answer to this, we have created "#openspace", a networked platform comprising SMEs, innovation partners, and start-ups. Here, the digital transformation is expedited and accompanied in the long term thanks to customised programmes," says Holger Werner, CEO and founder of #openspace.

"With '#openspace' we would like to empower SMEs so that they can fundamentally change their business models in line with new digital standards and help to overcome uncertainty with regards to digitalisation. Priority is given to the principle of 'helping people to help themselves'," says Joachim Köhler, COO and co-founder of "#openspace".

In addition to a six week basic module named "#SenseOfUrgency", "#openspace" offers various advanced programmes to provide a company with long-term support. The "#DigitalLab" module, for example, is geared towards supplementing an existing business model with digital products and processes. By contrast, in the "#DisruptiveLab", an existing business model is fundamentally adapted over three phases.

In addition to the offering for Germany's SME sector, with the "#StartUpFactory" "#openspace" also provides premises and support for international start-ups wishing to establish a foothold on the German and European markets or to expand in the region.

Identity confirmation provider HooYu today released its Digital Banking Benchmark Report. The report analyses the online account opening performance of five of the UK’s top retail banks to investigate where banks can improve their online account opening processes.

On average, only 53% of online account openings are completed, meaning that 47% of online account opening attempts are left abandoned.

One of the key drivers of abandonment is that the traditional process of name and address checking against credit reference agency databases fails just under a third of online account applications in the UK.

When name and address data checks fail and customers are asked to email or bring their ID documents to a branch it causes a huge hole in the onboarding funnel. Banks are investing heavily in marketing to attract customers to the bank’s site or app, however abandonment in online account opening is causing cost per acquisition to rise.

The report also reveals how online account opening volumes are growing and how long it takes on average to open an account online.  The report can be downloaded at https://business.hooyu.com/digital-banking-report

David Pope, Director of Marketing at HooYu said, “UK retail banks still have a clunky customer journey that kills the momentum of the application when a customer fails the traditional name and address data check. Sometimes the customer is asked to come in-branch or sometimes the bank emails the customer to ask them to return to their site to upload an identity document.  Banks should integrate ID document checking and digital footprint analysis into the heart of their online application process so more customers complete and less customers abandon.”

Randolph McFarlane, Head of Partnerships at Intelligent Environments said, “UK retail banks are still too slow to add new KYC technology to cater for the 30% or so of customers that fail the name and address check. Banks need to look for new technology partners so the customer’s identity document and digital footprint can instantly be analysed and verified to support a quicker, smoother account opening process.”         

HooYu was established as a global identity verification platform to help financial services firms to authenticate customer identity at point of online application.

The HooYu service is integrated into financial services merchants’ online application processes. HooYu cross-references and analyses data from a person’s digital footprint to confirm their real-world identity. HooYu also extracts and verifies data from ID documents at the same time as authenticating the ID document and conducting a biometric facial check comparing a selfie of the customer with the facial image on their ID document.

Analytics software firm FICO today announced that Southwest Airlines has been awarded the 2016 FICO Decisions Award in the Decision Management Innovation category for its Baker Airline Operations Recovery Optimizer tool. The Baker, as it is referred to by Southwest Airlines, is the airline industry’s first real-time, integrated recovery solver that generates solutions to operational disruptions such as maintenance problems and weather events, while minimising the impact to passengers and flight and ground crews.

Since its implementation in November 2015, Baker has yielded significant cost savings by demonstrating significant improvement in key metrics such as on-time performance (OTP), customers delayed more than two hours, and mishandled luggage. On days with irregular operations in which more than 2 percent of flights were cancelled, OTP was 10-15 percent higher than similar events in the past – equating to more than 2 percent increase in OTP since the tool was launched in November 2015. During a blizzard in Denver last year, for instance, OTP was seven percent higher than a comparable airline that did not take proactive action.

“Prior to the Baker implementation, superintendents of dispatch would address airline problems with a manual, labour-intensive process that could take hours to work out a single solution,” said Phil Beck, manager, optimisation solutions at Southwest. “Not only does this tool enable them to quickly react to problems within minutes, but they can also get ahead of potential disruptions hours in advance and have time to evaluate multiple scenarios. This project has supported the company’s goals and philosophies related to passenger hospitality, cost avoidance and operational performance.”

Using FICO^® Xpress Optimization Suite, the Baker utilises several algorithms, advanced in-memory cache technology, and hundreds of carefully calibrated parameters to achieve real-time performance and high-quality, integrated decision-making. The Baker team worked closely with Southwest’s Superintendents of Dispatch for years prior to launch, incorporating business knowledge and best practices gained from their decades of first-hand experience. 

“Southwest achieved an industry-first solution to a well-studied problem,” said Jim Bander, national manager, Decision Science, Toyota Financial Services, a judge for this year’s FICO Decision Awards. “The Baker project has several obvious benefits for its back-end operations and profitability, but at the end of the day, the real winners are the passengers who can get to their destinations without delay, and the crewmembers who can complete their assigned shifts as planned. Southwest is solving real problems for real people.”